BREHAM, Robert (1529/30-1600), of Leicester and Barrow upon Soar, Leics.

To have become recorder of Leicester Breham must have had some legal training, but his name has not been found in the inns of court registers. His recordership may have derived from his friendship with the Cave family (his daughter Philippa married the nephew of Sir Ambrose Cave, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster) or from his association with the earls of Huntingdon. His fee as recorder was £4, and in 1581 he was paid £3 6s.8d. for attending 16 days in London. The defective journals of the period show no trace of his four memberships of Parliament for Leicester. He had a good deal of land at Barrow upon Soar and elsewhere in the county, and was presumably a well-known local lawyer as his name is frequently mentioned in local wills. In his own will, drawn up in April 1600, he asked to be buried in the chancel of Barrow church. Apart from £10 a year to his wife Agnes, almost everything was left to his daughter who, with her husband, was appointed executor. The will included bequests to the poor of Barrow, Quorndon, Mount Sorrel and Woodhouse. He died on 28 June 1600.1Quorndon Recs. ed. Farnham, passim; Nichols, Leics. iii. 68, 69; Leics. Med. Peds. 78; Vis. Leics. (Harl. Soc. ii), 56; CPR, 1563-6, p. 331; 1569-72, p. 433; Leicester Recs. iii. 160, 187, 459; Somerville, Duchy, i. 565; DL 1/80/3; S. H. Skillington, Hist. Leicester, 167.